


Safe Shot

by pwcorgigirl



Category: House M.D.
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 02:54:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18562465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pwcorgigirl/pseuds/pwcorgigirl
Summary: Wilson takes a stand, and they both suffer for it. This is the first sequel to A Good Shooting.





	Safe Shot

Title: _Safe Shot_  
Author:  
Warning/rating/word count: The sequel to [A Good Shooting](http://pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com/429588.html). Rated for mid-teens and up for description of a drug overdose. 2,890 words. AU for most of the Tritter-arc from the series.  
Summary: Wilson takes a stand, and they both suffer for it.

\------------------------------------------------------

It happened, Wilson realized much later, right under his nose. All the times he'd been concerned about House mixing Vicodin and alcohol, and he'd never suspected this.

And it all started with a cop with the clap.

"Hey, you're a real M.D., right?" Detective Michael Tritter said as he stood on the other side of the autopsy table from Wilson. Between them was the corpse of a young man who wore the wrong color shirt in the wrong neighborhood, thus inadvertently making himself a gang target. The victim was barely out of boyhood, and his red hoodie wasn't doing a thing to hide the bloodstains. 

"That's what's on my diploma," Wilson said as he searched the victim's pockets and dropped the contents into a pan. Keys, wallet, a St. Christopher's medal missing the chain. _Lot of good it did this poor little bastard,_ Wilson thought as he picked up the shears to cut off the dead boy's clothes. 

"So you can write prescriptions?" Tritter said. He'd leaned in closer, practically hovering over the corpse. 

_Here it comes,_ Wilson thought. He didn't like Tritter, who had been known to be unnecessarily rough on gay suspects, and had always done his best to fly below the radar of the big cop. Still, even staying away from Tritter didn't spare him hearing others repeat his remarks about how fags just needed a little beating to toughen them up. Apparently Tritter had what passed as a great sense of humor in the cop shop. 

Wilson peeled off the kid's bloody jeans. "If you want me to write you a prescription, then the answer is no. No decent doctor is going to write 'scrips for a patient whose records he doesn't have on file."

Tritter leaned even closer. A couple of more inches and he'd be on top of the half-naked corpse between them. "This is not something I want to see a regular doc about, you know?" He glanced downward toward his belt buckle.

"Sexually transmitted diseases have to be reported to the county health department," Wilson said. 

Tritter flushed bright red and stepped back from the autopsy table. "Come on, help out a brother in blue. Doc Jasperson used to do it all the time before he retired." 

"Different time, different rules," Wilson said. He placed the shears on the instrument tray. "I don't write 'scrips for anybody. If you want to get your clap treated, go see some other real doctor." 

"You little ..." Tritter said, his hands closing into fists.

Wilson picked up a Virchow post mortem knife from the tray. It was ten inches long, made of heavy stainless steel with a straight spine, and the weight felt good in his hand. 

"This is not a little knife," Wilson said. "You hit me, and you'll be in a world of hurt. Now unless you want to talk about how this kid died, which is pretty damned obvious, then get your ass out of my lab." 

He didn't put the knife down until he heard the exterior door at the far end of the hall slam behind Tritter. His hands didn't start shaking until the knife clattered back down on the tray, and he had to grip the side of the table to make them stop.

\---

He should have put two and two together long before now. He'd seen House lethargic, his appetite gone, his mind dulled, and put it down to the pain. He'd seen the empty packets that once held stool softener tablets in the bathroom trash and had told House he needed Raisin Bran and more water. 

Hell, he'd lain in the same bed with House, who was sweating and scratching, and had chalked it up to ... what? Dry skin? Afterburner flush from the glass of bourbon House had every evening?

_You weren't paying attention. You stopped_ looking _at him. Really looking._

Instead of looking, he buried himself in his work, finding solace in the company of the dead after House got himself arrested driving while high, the prescription bottle in his motorcycle jacket pocket a betrayal of trust that House was irritatingly dismissive about. 

So he spent long days cataloging the dead, and longer nights next to House, ignoring so much to shield his own heart. And he'd stopped being observant because it _hurt_.

Until tonight, when he came home from working the late shift so that Dr. King could spend the day getting ready for Christmas morning with her kids to find what could not be ignored: House on the living room floor, his long body curved into a comma, his head in a puddle of chalky white vomit that stank of alcohol. 

The prescription bottle was there, empty in House's hand, and Wilson took a half-second to check it. Oxycodone. His own name was on the label as the prescribing physician. It could not be, but it was. Wilson turned him over onto his back, felt for the carotid pulse, free hand on his chest, searching for a good breath that would fade the blue-gray tint from House's lips. 

His briefcase. The vial of Narcan and syringe in his hands, drawing up 1 cc and slamming it home into House's thigh muscle through the fabric of his jeans. Wiping out House's vomit-clogged mouth with his finger, tilting his head back and breathing for him as the minutes passed. 

A second dose, a few more rescue breaths, and House suddenly drew breath with a low screech and his eyes fluttered open. He groaned, his hands flailing to push Wilson off him and grip his leg, and he rolled onto his side and vomited again. 

Wilson suddenly saw the evening before him: dragging House down the hall to the bathroom to spend the night beside the toilet as he sweated, shivered, puked and shit his way through the immediate withdrawal brought on by the Narcan injections. Wiping vomit up off the floor and trying to talk sense into House as he retched into the toilet bowl. 

The alternative was calling 911 and letting someone else deal with the mess. Wilson sat back on his heels and checked House's jeans pockets for his phone. Flipped it open, dialed 911, and placed it on a dry spot of floor by House's head. 

"911. What's your emergency?" came the tinny voice from the phone's speaker. He didn't stay long enough to see House, bleary-eyed and pale, scrabbling for the phone, barely coherent. 

He left the door unlocked and walked away.

\---

The hotel room was warm and clean, the walls an unoffensive beige, the carpet tan, the bedspread a muted paisley of blues and reds. He knew too much about hotel rooms to ever truly relax in one -- too many dead bodies on the bathroom floors or staining the carpet between the beds -- but he lay down on top of the bedspread and tried to rest, to think, to regroup in the harsh silence that rang in his ears since he closed House's door behind him.

It wasn't not like it was the first time he'd ever been betrayed by a lover. Hell, he could probably do entire graphs of the frequency and emotional severity of what he'd experienced at the hands of the men he loved. But this one was somehow worse, both for the deviousness of what House did and for how much it hurt. 

He'd thought House was going to be the one, despite the difficulties posed by his disability and the pain from his mangled leg. Sure, he'd mentioned pain management to House, and House had bluntly turned him down, insisting that he could manage.

_You thought he was dealing with it,_ his conscience chided him. _So you didn't have to._

He wondered how many times House had been high when they'd made love.

He wondered if it would've been different if he'd met him sooner, before the day he was shot. House was a closed book on the subject of his prematurely ended career, although Wilson got a little insight one day when he arrived to pick House up from his post-retirement gig helping out with long-closed cold cases. 

Bert Jackson, House's former watch commander at First Division, was a talkative, mother hen of a man with a bottomless thirst for coffee and gossip, and he was more than happy to meet House's new friend.

"He's one smart, ornery bastard, and he gets the job done. We got half the cold cases of the other divisions because House solved 'em the first time around," Bert said.

"You didn't know him then? It wasn't all brains. He was no desk jockey like some of these fat ass flat foots around here. House could run like a deer. Big guy like that, you'd think he'd shake the earth, but he'd run a fleeing suspect into the ground before the perp knew what hit him. Funniest thing I ever saw was House running down a guy whose pants fell off in mid-stride. House almost lost him because he was laughing so hard." 

Bert swallowed the last of his coffee. "Ah, it's a damned shame what happened to him. Breaks my fucking heart to see him on that cane." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, the unselfconscious habit of someone who spent too much time alone. "But he's alive and he's still got it up here." He tapped the side of his head with his forefinger. "That's what matters."

_Other things matter too,_ Wilson thought as he stared up at the stuccoed hotel ceiling. He'd thought with House that he could break his own bad habits, but they'd just become viciously symbiotic when combined with House's own particular ways of dealing with life's shitty deals. 

He closed his eyes, and finally fell asleep to the muted, endless surf of cars passing in the night.

\---

Three days later, he visited House in rehab at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. House looked as gray as his rumpled shirt as he sat by a window and clumsily smoked a cigarette during the ten-minute smoke break. 

"You don't smoke," Wilson said. 

"I do now. Smokers get a smoke break. Non-smokers get more chances to recite that stupid prayer and contemplate their higher power. My higher power is nicotine."

"That'll kill you a lot slower than your previous god," Wilson said. He leaned closer to House, his arm on the end table between them. He saw House tense slightly, having already guessed what was coming. 

"I heard from your attorney today, who is now our attorney because the prescription you were found with had a legitimate DEA number. My DEA number, House." Wilson punctuated the end of the sentence by slamming his hand onto the table. "I never applied for that number! All my patients are dead, and you know I don't write 'scrips for anyone." 

House's face was absolutely still and his gaze slipped off to the side, past Wilson to the doorway behind him. 

"Back when Tritter arrested you, you told me the prescription was forged, that it was a one-time thing. That was months ago, and now this. How is that a real DEA number was issued to me?"

House looked back at him. "I did it. I filled out the paperwork in your name."

There weren't a lot of things that Wilson would consider a deal breaker in his relationship with House, but this was most definitely one. Possibly the one, the thing there was no coming back from.

"House, why? Why do something so stupid? You risked everything, for yourself and for me. I know cops. You all hate junkies!"

"Because I'm in pain." The last word rose in a low roar, and House glared at him, his free hand clutching his leg. "Every day, all day, every minute, unless there's something that takes my mind off it for a little while. When they had work for me, that helped. Drinking helps. You ... you help. But it's worse now, and the only thing that really works is the pills, until they don't, and I need something more. And that's why."

House pushed himself to his feet and limped away, his gait as grotesque as a scarecrow battered by a high wind. It was only then that Wilson realized they'd taken his cane away. 

\---

The days to come were like a slow-tumbling nightmare, with the ever-changing images before Wilson each coming up worse. He felt certain the apartment had been searched again, but this time by someone who was more careful and less blatantly vindictive than Tritter. He had a long meeting with the attorney, who took reams of notes, and assured him that the charge against him would be dropped, in light of his DEA application and the prescriptions having been forged. 

"I'm afraid your friend ... ah, Mr. House, well, it's not going to go well for him. It would be best if you distanced yourself from him. You need to prepare yourself to be called to testify against him."

"House and I were living together as lovers when he was arrested. Won't that make me a hostile witness?" 

The attorney looked over his glasses at Wilson. "So how do you feel about him now, since he's jeopardized your medical license, generally put you through hell, and you moved out of the apartment you were sharing with him the night he was found overdosed on the living room floor?"

"I ... I don't know," Wilson said. 

"Better make your mind up quick," the attorney said, and pushed his glasses up his nose before turning over another page on his legal pad. 

\--- 

Another day, another smoke break, but this time House was in his room, wearing a pair of thin, hospital-issued pajamas with a dry towel draped around his shoulders. His hair was damp and spiky from showering and his eyes were red.

"What happened?"

"Cymbalta's not doing a thing for my leg, but it guarantees seeing the same breakfast twice." House sniffed and rubbed his nose. "They call it 'Cymbarfa' in group."

House shuffled to his narrow bed and lay down. "I'm pretty sure you can still yell at me from that angle, so let's get this visit over with."

"House," Wilson said, and he stopped. The man on the bed, the man he loved -- had loved, he reminded himself -- looked like a drowned sailor, the bones sharp in his gaunt face and his eyes deeply hollowed. 

Yes, House had brought this catastrophe on himself, but there always comes a time when there's been enough suffering. Wilson had too many years of seeing parents weep over the sheet-draped bodies of their dead wastrel children to get any pleasure out of stacking on any more hurt. 

House turned his face into the thin pillow. "Cold," he muttered softly and wrapped his arms around himself. Wilson pulled off his wool suit jacket and draped it over House, and then, acting on an unquenchable impulse, slid onto the bed next to him. It was a tight fit, and they were face to face. House snaked an arm out from under the jacket and held him fast. 

"Missed you," House said quietly, his breath soft on Wilson's cheek. It was probably as close to an apology as he'd ever get from House.

"We got off course somehow," Wilson said.

"There's a way back," House said. "Tritter never read me my rights." 

"What!" Wilson tilted his head back so he could see House's face whole before him. "You're just now remembering this? How high were you that night?"

"Wasn't feeling any pain, but I was nowhere near high." House swallowed hard. He would have looked away -- his default method of deflecting blame -- but Wilson put his hand on House's cheek and held him there. 

"Tell me what really happened."

"If I had two good legs, I would have just beaten the bigoted shit out of him. He's all about settling things like a man," House said, his voice dripping sarcasm. "But I don't and I didn't, and he was too busy sticking his hand down my pants to remember all the words in the Miranda warning." 

"How are we going to fight this? It's your word against his. If you lose . . ." 

"Yeah, I know. I go to prison, they rescind my city pension, no conjugal visits from you, but hey! I probably won't live long enough in the joint to be too worried about all that. So here's how: we do what I do best. We dig up every piece of dirt on the son-of-a-bitch and we use it. Every case where he slapped around a suspect who looked light in his loafers. Every nasty little fag joke he ever told in the squad room. And we tie it all back to you refusing to treat his STD off the books, and him getting even, because he figured out about us." 

"How are you going to get the evidence? You're off the cold case squad." 

"You met me on the last day I was a detective. I was pretty damned good at it before then." His eyes glittered, predatory and watchful, and for the first time, crazy as it was, Wilson felt like maybe they had a chance.

\--- _The End for now_


End file.
